This talk examines the linked mythologies of Taiwan's two signature global achievements: the Taiwan New Cinema (TNC) and the semiconductor industry. Drawing on celebrated TNC director Edward Yang's own biography as both an early microcomputer engineer and a founding figure of the TNC, the talk argues that these two myths expressed the same underlying national project: a defense of Taiwanese sovereignty and the strategic cultivation of a Taiwanese identity amidst geopolitical precarity. Both of these myths have been airbrushed with revisionism -- crediting the TNC's global success to auteur geniuses, and the semiconductor industry's success to visionary technocrats like Li Kwoh-ting and businessmen like Morris Chang. Rather than undermine these myths, this talk seeks to turn them inside-out: to show how each is a distinctly Taiwanese narrative about contingency and the bottom-up contributions of non-state actors. The talk concludes by turning to a much smaller, intra-regional myth, the South Korean social media trend #TaiwanSensibility, to argue, following Kuan-hsing Chen and Frantz Fanon, that popular, regionally grounded expressions of national consciousness are no less vital than hard geopolitical power to the defense of Taiwan's sovereignty and especially to visions of collectivity that transcend the nation form.

Sponsored by: CTS; Co-sponsored by CEAS